


We're Parallel Sinking Ships

by autoeuphoric (FreezingRayne)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Family, Gen, Post-Sburb, Strider Feels, Time Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-06
Updated: 2016-06-06
Packaged: 2018-07-12 18:22:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7117408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreezingRayne/pseuds/autoeuphoric
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Holy shit. What did you see?”</p><p>You look down at your cup–-still steaming, still too hot–-and say, “I saw you.”</p><p>Dave goes totally still. Sun catches his shades in a silver flash. “Me.”</p><p>“Or my bro, I guess. I knew what he looked like from pics and videos.”</p><p>(Dirk tells Dave a story from his childhood.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	We're Parallel Sinking Ships

**Author's Note:**

> cross-posted from my tumblr because reasons.

This is good. You’re down for this. Sitting here in the breeze off the lake, sun warming the tops of your shoulders. Your coffee is still too hot to drink; milk makes you sick to your stomach, and you refuse to add ice. Dilutes that shit. 

Dave had choked his own coffee with cream, then stared you down like he was daring you to call him on it. You don’t know what the fuck your other self had against his health and wellbeing, but you really hate the guy for it. You’re honestly surprised every time Dave wants to hang out, but you’re grateful. Really fucking grateful.

At first the two of you avoided any mention of your respective childhoods, but if there’s one thing you had in common it was survival. Growing up inside the constraints of a hostile environment, even if yours waited outside, and Dave’s lurked in crawlspaces and the shadows behind doors.

He just got done telling you about the couple weeks he spent trying to teach himself to pick pockets. He got the technique down no problem–-it was the densely packed crowds, the contact, the necessary intimacy of wrestling someone’s wallet out of their pocket that sent him back to scrounging through dumpsters whenever his bro flaked out on him.

“Top that,” he says. “I guarantee you can’t get any more pathetic than failing at petty theft because stranger danger.”

You drum your fingertips on the tabletop. Then you tell him about the morning you went swimming and got your dumb ass bit by a barracuda. Or something. Some sort of shitty spiny fish with a stinger that left you half paralyzed, the whole left side of your body buzzing with numb static. It was all you could do to keep yourself floating on your back and not freak out when you started hallucinating.

“Holy shit. What did you see?”

You look down at your cup–-still steaming, still too hot–-and say, “I saw you.”

Dave goes totally still. Sun catches his shades in a silver flash. “Me.”

“Or my bro, I guess. I knew what he looked like from pics and videos.”

You’d floated all day, sick, choking, incoherent, and the whole time your bro had stayed with you. You still remember the way he had sounded, how much softer his voice had been than in any of his interviews. How when the current had somehow miraculously pulled you back to your apartment, when you’d managed to drag yourself up the fifteen floors to your room, he’d talked you through the first aid.

The next day, when you’d finally flushed enough of the venom out of your system to form a coherent sentence, he was gone.

“So, yeah. That’s my pathetic childhood story.”

Dave hasn’t moved. He hasn’t touched his drink. “Are you sure it was him?”

“Dude, it wasn’t anybody. I was sick.” You itch at a bead of sweat on your neck. “Actually, right when he showed I thought I was hallucinating myself for a second? I mean, he had the Stiller shades on, but he was pretty young, a lot younger than he’d been when he started making public appearances. But seriously, there was nobody there, especially not a dude who’d died four hundred years–-.”

You realize who you are talking about and you shut your fucking mouth.

Dave’s got his head tipped to the side; he's listening to something out of your auditory range. He asks, “Do you remember what he was wearing?”

“White–.” Your throat sticks. “White t-shirt.” You remember how it had gone transparent and heavy with saltwater, like a skin he was shedding.

Dave rests both palms against the table, scrapes his chair back, and stands up. His shades come off, then his hoodie, plain white undershirt riding up from the static before he pulls it back down. Bare, his face is small and pale and vulnerable. He has a mole just under his left eye that you didn't know was there. Your insides contract; there’s a dull pain in your chest that you have absolutely no idea what to do with.

Dave puts his shades back on. “Dude, don’t let gnats drown in my coffee,” he says.

It isn’t like in the game–-his time tables don’t appear, there’s no giant red clock superimposed behind him, no flash of light or theatrical _tick, tick, tick_. He is just there, and then he isn’t.

You have enough time to reach across the table to cover the mouth of his cup against bugs before he reappears on the other side of the deck. He swears and staggers, hitting the mildewed railing. It gives under his weight with a crack like a pistol.

You’re up and beside him, forgetting your resolution not to flash-step like a creepy fuck in your haste to make sure he doesn’t end up in the lake. He grabs onto the front of your tank top. The seams rip.

“Fuck.” He’s damp all the way through and his cheekbones are a blotchy, angry red. His t-shirt is torn and stained, and the skin beneath them looks sunburned too. He’s shaking so hard he can barely stand up, but he still tries to flinch away.

“Sorry.” You step out of grabbing distance.

“No, it’s cool, just–.” He shakes his head once, shoves wet bangs out from under his shades. “Shit hurts.”

You don’t know if he means the sunburn or the time travel or some other invisible injury. He doesn’t seem hurt, just exhausted. He takes a step and his leg gives up on him. You catch him before he can eat it completely.

“Swoon,” he says. Even his laugh has gone limp. “The ocean is wet as fuck, turns out. I think my ears are peeling and I didn’t see a single goddamn dolphin. Zero stars, would not recommend.” His head rolls against your shoulder. “Dude. You were so fucking small.”

Your stomach does a trembling backflip. “You actually–-it was really you?”

“Yeah it was–-yeah, you were messed up. But you did really good. You’ll be fine. I mean. Obviously you’re fine.”

“Because of you.”

“Gotta close the loops,” he says, but there’s a catch in his voice you don’t think is just from gargling seawater for hours. He smells like brine and sunlight. He smells like home. Distantly, you feel the echo of the venom in your blood, and the fingers that had held your head out of the water, the soft quirk of a mouth that told you to hold on. Again, all your internal organs do that thing. That sharp little tug of tenderness.

“Thanks,” you say. “For the save.”

Dave is definitely dehydrated, and the shaking is probably the onset of sunstroke. His lips are chapped all to hell, curling up at the corner as he says, “Anytime.”

**Author's Note:**

> *mumbled strider feelings* 
> 
> i'm quadrantconfusion on tumblr come visit me


End file.
